Australian farmers hold back on buying fertiliser as drought bites
Sydney — Australian farmers are postponing buying fertiliser and other products they typically use to protect their crops as a drought across the country's east coast darkens the outlook for the rural sector in one of the world's top exporters of grains. Farmers usually begin sowing wheat, the nation's biggest rural export, in late April, but this year they are trying to minimise expenditure on items such as fertiliser, herbicides and pesticides amid the threat of a second-straight crop failure following the hottest summer in records going back to 1910. That means companies that make those products like Nufarm, which reports half-year financial results on Wednesday, could become the latest to be caught in the fallout from the catastrophic drought that is already hitting everything from wine production to the wool clip. “I would normally have bought about 100 tons of (fertiliser and crop protection) product by now, but there has been no rain, we have no soil moisture, so I haven't pu...
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